On remote Rollrock Island, men make their living - and fetch their wives - from the sea. The witch Misskaella knows how to find the girl at the heart of a seal. She'll coax a beauty from the beast for any man, for a price. And what man wouldn't want a sea-wife, to have and to hold, and to keep by his side forever?
But though he may tell himself that he is the master, one look in his new bride's eyes will transform him just as much as it changes her. Both will be ensnared - and the witch will look on, laughing.
I've re-started this review, like, five times, and you all are damn lucky that I did because this morning I was high on some fabulous music, and that never turns out well. A whole lotta shakin' goin' on. I've gotten pretty far from the mood I was in when I finished this book, a week ago. I definitely thought that more time would assist in my writing a "review" but clearly that was a wash.
Moving on: So TBoRI, henceforth to be abbreviated to. . . Bride Island. Because nothing says appreciation like being too lazy to fully type out a title. And I did appreciate this book! Actually, I had bypassed it in the library because the description and the cover (I know, I know, never judge a book by its cover, what up) kinda said "melodramatic teen girl dramaz" and I was not in the mood for it. But my momma recommended it, and momma says, baby do.
The book starts with a brief vignette, before going back in time to Misskaella's youth - the constant teasing and comments from her siblings and townsfolk, condemning her for her otherness (apparently, the entire island is redheaded and kinky, except for Misskaella, which begs the question of how closely related they all are that a recessive gene is town gossip). So anyhow, Misskaella doesn't really fit in, and people give her crap all the time about how she is shaped like a seal, which means that when she is left without financial support, she doesn't really care two hoots about the probable negative consequences to creating human ladies out of seals for the horny menfolk. (This review is getting out of hand, y'all. BUT I CAN'T STOP).
Okay, the good part of this book is that things will happen, and you'll kinda go, "How are we going to extricate ourselves from this sitch?" Because each step in this path just gets more and more untenable. From drawing brides out of the seals, to the women abandoning their former husbands on the island, to the sealbaby hybrids growing up and there being no daughters and and and. It's just not a workable long term plan is what I'm saying. And yet each new development comes naturally, and never at any point do you go, Well, If I had a deus ex machina, I could get away with some crazy shit too. It's of a piece. There is not one false note, one piece which removes you from the story and makes you question it. To be awfully maudlin, you are wrapped up in the tale as much as the mams are wrapped up in skins.
TBoRI is an interesting look at gender politics. I maintain that the reason the men were so transfixed by the selkies is that there was witch magic involved as well, but my mother thinks that the men were simply weak willed. The difference between an optimist and a pessimist, I think. It's hard to forget that horrifying scene wherein the men begin bringing back the selkies wholesale, and the father reveals that he's been stashing this selkie in a small back shed next to the house where his wife and children live. It definitely hearkens to those awful sex slavery cases in real life, and Connie Willis' All My Darling Daughters, where you're sacrificing a creature not fully human to sexual abuse and base desires. Some people complain that of all the perspectives in the narrative (variously the witch, a child, and a man) there is none which comes from the brides themselves. I think it's well done, because the brides themselves are so wholly disenfranchised, so completely without recourse or a voice in the chain of events which occur. One of the only times we see a selkie taking her own initiative, she is running into the sea, killing herself over her heartbreak.
When you finish, you feel as though you've learned something, but it's hard to say exactly what that is - be kinder, perhaps, to the ones around you, don't hold onto to something so hard that you choke the life out of it - if you love something, set it free. Even after the great pied piper migration, after things begin re-setting themselves, you wonder at whether things have really changed. It's clear that some men are still so hard as to be glad that their former brides are being hunted as animals and rendered down, as Lanagan puts it.
The book is balanced such that it's poetical enough to seem a dream, but real enough to stick with you after you close it. It's the mark of a well-written book that a simple, toss-away phrase in the first page strikes you so much that you hold it in mind for the rest of the book. When I was looking for it again, I almost couldn't find it, it was so wrapped up in a paragraph. It's a far cry from some books which are only keeping me half interested, skimming and skipping over the prose. You feel salted afterwards, so real is the sea breeze.
So, TBoRI is a wonder, sure enough, though as I expressed to my mother, it did not make me sob, and therefore, was not close to catching Jellicoe Road in my heart. It is hard enough to forget, that's for sure. And certainly not a teen melodrama at all. And let that be a lesson to you: listen to your mama, and if she yearns for the sea, let her be.
No comments:
Post a Comment